Middle Georgia restaurateurs say it’s hard to find good help in the kitchen
A good cook is hard to find, and the same goes for other help in restaurant kitchens.
There’s a shortage of cooks and kitchen workers across the country, according to media reports, but there’s actually a lack of qualified people with a passion for the food industry, chefs and restaurateurs across Middle Georgia say.
It’s not that applicants don’t show up when a new restaurant comes to town or when a job opens up.
“You can hire a lot of people off the street who come in and you can teach them a task within the restaurant,” said chef Stuart Hardy, the assistant department chairman at Helms College’s culinary school at Goodwill Industries in Macon. “But your good cooks are the people who know every part of the (process) and who can ... help out everywhere and have that motivation, that stamina, that endurance and that passion to survive the industry.”
There are a lot of reasons students attend those programs at Helms College, which are nationally accredited.
“Some want to own a restaurant,” he said. “Some want to work in big cities for a chef, some want to cater or own their own franchise. But they come here with a passion for food ... and want to know how to turn that passion into a career. We provide them with realistic expectations.
“Some learn very quickly this is not what they want. ... It’s important for people to understand to be a good chef you have to be a good cook.”
The students and faculty operate Edgar’s Bistro restaurant at the school, which is open to the public for lunch. They also cater at certain events.
D’Andre Faison, of Macon, has known he always wanted to work in the food industry.
Faison, 30, worked in a variety of jobs in restaurants before going through the culinary program at Helms College.
“I’ve always had a passion for cooking, and it’s something I’ve always loved to do,” he said. “I actually learned from my mom, who passed in 2004. I promised her I was going to become a great chef.”
He is a June graduate of the culinary program and has landed a job that should help him move closer to fulfilling that promise.
Faison began working last week as a salad and pastry chef at Grits Cafe in Forsyth.
“It was indescribable,” he said. “It felt like a full circle -- like everything I actually worked for I actually accomplished.”
‘PARTICULAR’ ABOUT HIRES
Cesare Mammarella, who operates five Macon restaurants under the HotPlates Restaurant Group, said he’s always had a hard time finding good workers.
“It’s been a nightmare since I opened 15 years ago,” he said. “Some of the key people when I first started downtown, I brought from Atlanta. ... When you do find someone good, you need to really take care of them because it’s hard to fill that position, whether it’s a line cook or a grill guy.”
Sometimes he puts “feelers out” in Atlanta or in Jacksonville, Florida, to try to attract workers.
“It’s hard,” he said. “No one wants to move to Macon unless it’s the right situation.”
Mammarella said when he was growing up in the industry “and maybe as soon as five to 10 years ago,” restaurant employees expected to work hard and a lot of long hours.
“Now when people get to 30 or 35 hours, they are trying to get people to cover their shifts,” he said. “There just doesn’t seem to be the passion to want to learn.
“It’s rare to have someone come in as a dishwasher who moves on to the salads and desserts and then he moves on to grill and saute and move their way up because they are so passionate. I don’t see that any more.”
Saralyn Collins, who owns Grow, a farm-to-table restaurant on Riverside Drive in Macon, said she’s been looking to fill two positions -- for a server and cook -- for a couple of weeks.
“Good help is always hard to find. ... We are pretty particular,” she said. “I will say most people who start with us either last a week or they are there 10 years. There is hardly any in between.”
David Brentise, general manager of Smok’n Pig BBQ at Macon Mall, says he can get 30 or 40 applicants a day. The store has about 120 employees.
“I can hire 10 or 12 people at a time and weed them out,” he said. “Some restaurants don’t have that luxury. They can only hire one or two at a time.”
Smok’n Pig BBQ, based in Valdosta, is part of a group of about five restaurants, and it has close to 900 employees.
SKEWED VIEW FROM TV?
Several things have caused changes in employment in the cooking industry.
Some cooking shows on television give the impression that kitchen jobs are easy and fun in a spacious environment.
“Here’s a problem with these glorified TV cooking shows,” Mammarella said. “If I hire you on as a grill guy, ... you are the grill guy for a year or two years. So the next job you apply for (is) the chef -- even though you’ve never sauteed anything in your life. The word ‘chef’ gets tossed around so easily that any trained chef should be insulted.”
Hardy, at Helms College, agrees.
“Now I think because of (TV cooking shows) those people who are chasing a kitchen dream, they realize that their dream is not necessarily a reality. ... It’s an overworked, underappreciated position.”
An improving economy has also given people more job options, and some are not choosing to work in an industry that includes nights, weekends and holiday work schedules, Hardy said.
Another change that may be subtle but significant is years of a steady increase in immigrants, often from Mexico, has slowed and leveled off.
“Immigrants we’ve worked with in the past have been really good employees to the point that some of them have had other opportunities,” Mammarella said. “They are not going straight into the restaurant world.”
To contact writer Linda S. Morris, call 744-4223.
This story was originally published September 6, 2015 at 10:26 PM with the headline "Middle Georgia restaurateurs say it’s hard to find good help in the kitchen ."